ROME -- Authorities held a 15-year-old runaway boy in isolation Thursday for questioning about how and why he struck 'like a bolt from the blue' and hijacked a KLM jetliner carrying 97 passengers and crew.
Adalgiso Scioni's father remained in Rome in hopes of seeing him but his Dutch mother and younger brother and sister flew back to the family home on the island of Sardinia.
The boy, a gangly six-footer, ran away from home Dec. 16, using his savings to fly to Amsterdam, the Dutch city of his birth where he and his family lived until three years ago, relatives said.
Scioni was held in isolation in the Casal del Marmo Prison for Juveniles pending completion of questioning by authorities. Prison officials said he slept 7 hours, showered and ate a breakfast of hot chocolate and sweet biscuits in the guards' dining room.
Relatives, perhaps seeking an explanation for the boy's hijack escapade, said Scioni had difficulty adjusting to Sardinia, preferred speaking Dutch to Italian and missed his friends and his maternal grandparents in Amsterdam.
When his Dutch grandparents put him on KLM Flight 343 back to Italy Wednesday, Scioni hijacked the plane.
Claiming he had smuggled a bomb aboard the twin-engine Boeing 737, the teenager forced the plane to divert from its Milan destination and land at Rome's Leonardo da Vinci Airport, police said.
The boy threatened to blow up the plane if authorities did not meet his demands -- first for $1 million and later for $4 million, a flight to New York and a reservation in a luxury hotel, police said.
But Scioni was seized without a struggle when he left the plane after four hours of negotiations, believing his terms had been met. No one was harmed and authorities found no bomb.
'It was a bolt from the blue,' Angelo Scioni, 53, told reporters at the airport where he saw off his wife and younger children.
'He has always been an educated boy with healthy principles,' said the father, who owns a clothing factory and printing plant in the Sardinian town of Arbus. 'I can't understand why he acted this way. I'm truly surprised and humiliated.'
Scioni's parents appeared at the airport pale and drawn. But but their younger children, Angela, 7, and Lucio, 9, were grinning.
'They don't understand the gravity of what happened,' their father said.
